The Therapy that Changed My Life

by Joan Borysenko, Ph.D.

My 23-year-old son Justin and I were sitting at the kitchen table late one night. Max, our Rottweiler, was curled at our feet. It was a poignant time for our family. Justin had just completed college and would be moving to the Hawaiian island of Kauai at the end of the month. His younger brother Andrei would head off to college at the same time. Their sister Natalia was about to be married, and my husband Miroslav and I were thinking about pulling up stakes and moving from Boston to Colorado. I got up to go to bed, but Justin called me back. There was an urgent tone in his voice that concerned me until I saw his shining smile. He looked deeply into my eyes. Mom, I have something really important to tell you. Are you listening really listening? He wrapped his arms around me. I love you, he said. I forgive you and I beg for your forgiveness. Both of us began to weep. I whispered, I love you, Justin. I love you so very much and I forgive you. We rocked slowly in each others arms. Then we grinned at one another and burst into a spirited chorus from Ren and Stimpy, our favorite cartoon: Happy, happy, joy, joy! Happy, happy, joy, joy! Holding hands, we sang and danced around the moonlit room like a couple of kids. Sound weird? Not if youve been through the Hoffman Quadrinity Process, which Justin and I had recently completed. Founder Bob Hoffman devised the Process 45 years ago to help people transform the patterns of emotional and spiritual suffering that they learned during childhood. As Carl Jung and John Bradshaw have said, we cant find the light in our lives until weve gone back through the darkness and transformed the original pain of childhood. Until we do, we are covertly ruled by the wounded, emotionally immature child within, who searches for the unconditional love it needed but did not receive from its family of origin. According to Hoffman, we adopt negative emotional patterns from our parents in a process he calls negative love. When parents are unable to love their children unconditionally, the children feel estranged, abandoned and increasingly desperate. Consequently, they try to ensure their parents love by unconsciously imitating them. In effect, we are saying, See, Mommy and Daddy? Im just like you. Now will you love me? In this way, we adopt many of our parents worst traits. When I was an adolescent I kept a journal in which I listed all of the awful ways my mother treated me. I

The Hoffman Quadrinity Process is the most comprehensive, effective program for healing the wounds of childhood that I have yet encountered.
vowed that I would never do these things to my children. Yet when I had kids, I found myself playing out some of my mothers most destructive patterns. For example, I hated it when my mother manipulated my behavior with guilt. Nonetheless, I grew up to be a guilt tripper myself. It drove me nuts when my mother worried over everything imaginable, from germs to finances, even when everybody was in good health and the bank account was full. Nevertheless, I grew up to be what psychologist Albert Ellis calls an awfulizer. Not My Mother None of us is a carbon copy of Mom or Dad. Instead of adopting all their parents negative traits, adolescents seek their own authentic way of being. But to the degree that we feel unloved or unworthy, our uniqueness fails to flower. Since our attempts to be lovable by imitating our parents didnt pay off, we begin to define ourselves as being not-Mom or not-Dad. I was in my 30s before I realized that a major part of my personality had developed in rebellion to my mother. I wasnt really Joan. I was not-Lillian. For example, my mother wandered around the house like the Health Gestapo. She ogled every bite we ate, constantly felt our foreheads for fever and lurked at the bathroom door, yelling, Dont flush! so she could examine our bowel functions. Once, when the summer air turned chilly, she called the pediatrician to ask whether my brother should be put to bed in cotton or flannel pajamas. I felt invaded by my mother. So when I grew up, thermometers became a rare commodity in my home. Whereas my mother kept me in bed for two days after cold symptoms were gone, our own kids went skiing as their noses ran. Whereas Id had to eat Jello and bouillon after a stomach upset, my own kids ate whatever appealed to them. Some of the ways I rebelled against my mother were actually helpful. She believed that emotions were a sign of weakness and that religions were so much hogwash. In fact, she expressly forbade me to study psychology or religion. I attribute my lifelong interest in psychology and spirituality directly to adolescent rebellion against these opinions. But as long as those interests were associated with the rage I felt toward my mother, they could not flower from my soul. I needed to work through the anger I felt for my mother and to move into a place of forgiveness, where I felt free from her control. With the Hoffman Quadrinity Process, I went beyond forgiveness
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to a deep compassion and respect for my parents an extraordinarily peaceful hilltop monastery. The first struggles. I felt gratitude for how good their parenting thing that caught my eye was a statue of the Madonna actually had been, particularly in light of the pain they and child. It was a holy setting for holy work, but I still carried from their own childhoods. felt a little bit scared. I was entering this place not as the Hoffman says were composed of four parts: the confident professional who helped other people to heal wounded emotional child, the adult intellect, the spiritual old emotional wounds, but as plain old Joan with her self and the body. The purpose of the Process is to own wounds. I had nothing to hide behind. encourage the wounded emotional child to mature into I felt better as soon as I had my interview with Tim a self-aware, loving, emotional adult and to re-educate Lawrence, one of three teachers and two trainees who the adult intellect so that it accepts and works with the would work with our group of 21 students. He had read emotional self in service to the spiritual self. These my material carefully, understood my patterns and was three aspects are integrated with the body, which can absolutely kind, respectful and loving, despite what he then express optimal health, sexuality and harmonious knew about me. I left that interview with the sense that relationship to the natural world through the senses. I was going to be carefully, lovingly and thoroughly My husband Miroslav was the first of our family to go guided in a transformation that would leave no stone through the Quadrinity Process. He hoped to resolve some unturned or, as the Process puts it, no pattern unbusted. of his childhood pain and to develop a better relationship When I entered the room where most of our group with his parents, himself, me, and the work would take place over the next week, children. I watched as Mirosh filled out a I was further reassured by the presence of A crucial aspect days worth of pre-Process forms in which a young man about Justins age. Steves he had to meticulously consider hundreds of father had completed the Process a year of the Hoffman negative traits that were potentially present before. I knew that the first two days of the Process is the in his parents. Then he had to consider Process, called prosecution of mother which traits he had adopted and which he spiritual context and prosecution of father, were an had rebelled against. When Mirosh came exhaustive discharge of the anger about our in which the home after the Process, I expected him to be parents negative traits. Steves presence filled with the zeal of the newly converted. anger, forgiveness, gave me hope that the subsequent two I steeled myself to be pleasant. But I was days, called defense of parents, would compassion and surprised. The post-Process Mirosh had lead to healing; otherwise, I reasoned, he very little to say about what had gone on in re-parenting work wouldnt be there. the week during which three teachers and Just a year later, my own son would is done. 18 students had been sequestered in a quiet decide that he wanted to undertake the hotel in Cape Cod, Mass. Quadrinity Process. I had no fear of His presence spoke much louder than words. He the anger that Justin would mobilize toward me at seemed more in touch with his feelings and very the beginning of the week because I trusted in the respectful of mine. He was more peaceful and loving. transformation that he would undergo subsequently. He was a much better listener. His old buttons didnt I had a good laugh when Justin told me that hes had seem to work so well anymore, and even if I started to add continuation pages to the pre-Process lists of in on a jag of criticism, he didnt get defensive. The parental negative traits. I figured he was a perfectionist, transference from his mother to me had been erased or at a trait he had likely adopted from me! Getting in touch least greatly reduced. He saw me as myself, not through with the negative traits of ones parents is a crucial part the filter of his relationship to his mother. And he was of purging those traits in ourselves. Rather than ignoring able to cultivate a closer, more loving relationship with old wounds and espousing instant forgiveness a dead his parents, which is still deepening. end that Hoffman refers to as putting whipped cream After witnessing the changes in Mirosh, I signed up over garbage each parental and personal negative for the Process two months later. I was hoping to drop trait is dealt with specifically. During the last two days the transference I had, which often prevented me from of the Process, we were taught a powerful technique seeing people for who they were. I was also hoping for neutralizing our negative patterns, thus freeing up to become more joyful, for in spite of all the healing energy for more creative responses. I had already done, joy was a rare experience for me. A crucial aspect of the Hoffman Process is the spiritual Life seemed serious. A burden. And to tell the truth, context in which the anger, forgiveness, compassion sometimes I didnt really enjoy being alive. and re-parenting work is done. Even the thrashing of cushions and the attendant expletives during the Holy Work I went through the Process in Oakland, Calif., one of prosecution of my parents felt like holy work. This several sites around the country. The Oakland setting was was due to one of the first experiences of the week, the
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Light Journey. In this powerful visualization we were love traits they had taken on from their parents. I had a brought into the presence of the Light (God, or however stunning revelation about my father as a 6-year-old that you understand the source of your being) and our own explained many of his fears and idiosyncrasies. wise, compassionate, loving, spiritual self. My father was one of the most loving, respectful In that sacred context we met our wounded emotional people I have ever known, and also one of the most child and adult intellect, whose warring voices were frightened. I beat the cushions for a long time over the immediately recognizable as the tiresome, self- fear I adopted from him, which had been so limiting in deprecating, judgmental, defeatist inner dialogue that I my own life. But I had no inkling of the genesis of that was all too familiar with. It was obvious that their endless fear until I traveled back in time to interview him in bickering comprised my ego, a term I am using not in what seemed to be a parallel reality, as real as this world. the standard psychological sense, but as a description He told me a story of being brutally assaulted by the of the limited self, born of negative love, that perceives husband of the family cook. Rather than being told the the world in terms of fear, lovelessness and scarcity. I story, I experienced it as if I were in his body, living the was thrilled to realize that the constant uproar between horror moment by moment. I found myself thrashing on the frightened child and the bullying ego was the source the bed, weeping and crying out the pain of a deeply hurt of the smoke screen that obscured the natural luminous child as I relived his trauma. When it was over, I found clarity and unconditional love that is the essential core myself back in my 12-year-old role, comforting him. I of being the soul or spiritual self. felt like I had visited with my father s soul and read what I was galvanized to pour my whole self into completing was imprinted there. Was the assault that I experienced the Process, which I saw as a spiritual undertaking true in the sense that it really happened? I have no way as well as psychological healing. Of all the spiritual to know, since my father has been dead for 16 years, growth systems I had studied over the years, nothing and my mother for three years. But the Hoffman staff had given me such a strong experience believes that most such revelations can be of the self, coupled with a very specific corroborated. In any case, the literal truth One of the most and straightforward process of lovingly of what I experienced doesnt matter. As concrete changes dismantling the ego. the Jungian analyst Roger Woolger puts it, All of my classmates experienced the I have experienced such experiences in the imaginal realm have the quality of psychic or soul truth, in that Light Journey as a spiritual homecoming, a is the steady they explain life patterns and predispose re-awakening to their own true nature. The desire to live in the peace of core self, rather increase of joy and one to psychological transformation and spiritual growth. than in the ward between wounded emotional gratitude child and know-it-all intellect, infused us During the Process I felt safe and all with a sense of higher purpose as we nurtured, certain that any negative traits went into the anger work. And we didnt go into it alone. that I failed to recognize in myself would be lovingly During the Light Journey we also met our spirit guides, or pointed out to me by my teachers. At no time did the guardian angels. Lest you think Ive gone off the deep end work feel confrontational. Instead it felt honest, thorough here, I can tell you this: Between my work as a medical and respectful. The group bonded deeply over the course psychologist in a hospital and as a workshop leader, I have of the week. And in spite of the hard work, we shared a heard from hundreds of people who say they met their lot of laughs and an easy camaraderie. spirit guides during a near-death experience. Often these Nothing about our interaction escaped the eagle people maintain a relationship with their guides after they eyes of our teachers. Everything was grist for the mill have been brought back to life. Thankfully I didnt have to of transformation. The use of drama and beautifully die to meet my spirit guides, with whom I have had a lively constructed ritual took the work to a very special level. relationship since completing the Hoffman Process. Several of the rituals were so moving that I will always Soul Truth remember them as high points in my life. I found the intense work of the Process to be a During one, I came face-to-face with the sad fact that surprisingly private experience, although it was I really didnt care that much about living. Life seemed conducted for the most part in a group. At times we hard to me. I tended to suffer a lot. Through the beauty would complete an experience and then repair to our and drama of the ritual, I realized that life was a choice, rooms to write in our journals, often for hours. I wrote and that I had free will. I chose to live. I yelled to the hundreds of pages in the course of a week, coming to sky, I choose life! I want to Live! Le Chaim. some amazing new understandings about myself and One of the most concrete changes I have experienced my parents. During the defense of parents, we did a visualization exercise in which our 12-year-old selves since I took that vow is the steady increase of joy and interviewed each parent at 12 to find out what negative gratitude that began to bubble up that day. Another change is that I find it nearly impossible to blame and
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shame myself or anyone else. Hoffmans motto is: reach through time and space to our entire family Everyones guilty, but no ones to blame. Yes, I did past, present and future. As we mentally cut the cords of adopt all those negative patterns from Mom and Dad, negative love, I could feel the healing moving backwards and I suffered for years because of them. Then I passed in time, to my ancestors and all my relations. When Justin them on to Justin, Natalia and Andrei. I am guilty, but went through integration, I felt myself on the receiving Im not to blame. I was just passing the sins of my end of the healing he sent out to his own lineage. The parents onto my children in the same mindless way that week of Justins Process I tried to focus mentally on they have been passed on from the beginning of time. what he was likely to be doing, but on the seventh night, In my own awakening and taking responsibility for during integration, I was busy preparing dinner. Suddenly living my life in a more loving, compassionate, honest I looked at Mirosh and felt an overwhelming outpouring and joyful way, I have become a more healing presence. of love for him. He seemed so precious. Every hair on his I feel that I have healed my lineage both backwards and head seemed familiar and beloved. Gratitude for our 21year marriage flooded through me and I began to weep for forwards in time. joy. The dog and two cats were gathered around, and the Now, since he went through the Process, Justin almost outpouring of love flowed to them and from them. I felt seems luminous. Being around him is uplifting. He is connected to everything and began to undergo a dramatic attractive in the true sense of the word because you feel shift in perception. Everything seemed shimmering and good about yourself when you are around him. This was luminous. I couldnt tell where I ended and other things surprising to Justin at first. He certainly expected some began. Even the water cooler seemed cosmic, the plastic benefit from the Process, but had no idea of and glass a miracle of Gods creation. the magnitude of the change it would spur. The path for each of When Justin and I spoke later, he told I picture myself as a cup of love, he told me that hed had a particularly powerful us is different. But me. I dont feel pushed away or rejected experience of me in his visualization. Our anymore. I can love somebody and not care when we are ready to shared experience echoed the powerful about being loved back. The feeling of love teachings of the 27th generation Cherokee heal, the right path is its own reward. medicine woman and Tibetan Buddhist Ive also noticed that Justin and I can will open. teacher Dhyani Y wahoo. She reminds us be much more honest about our needs. We that every act of healing is an act of service dont do what others expect of us out of that we undertake not only for ourselves, but also for our negative love and people-pleasing. And if our behavior family, clan, nation and all beings. is not what other people expect, we can respond with Ive always felt that at its heart, healing is the simplest much more compassion and much less guilt. As we sat of matters, because we are already whole. Regardless at the window, watching rain pour off the leaves of the of the experiences we have in this lifetime, despite the weeping cherry tree, Justin told me: Spirituality feels wounds we give and receive in the ultimate service natural now, like a natural part of my being. It doesnt of growing in wisdom and compassion, our souls come just through meditation or yoga, but in daily life. never cease to shine. The Tibetan Buddhists compare We discussed the darkness, the self-hate that both of our spiritual self, what they call our own true nature, us had felt at times in our lives, the ways in which we or rigpa, to a mirror. It reflects the drama, but is itself had tried to avoid it, through alcohol or work or people changeless. Healing is about parting the clouds that or even meditation. I realized that I had gained five obscure the mirror-like perfection that we are. In pounds since the Process, but for the first time in my life the Process, we become alchemists who transmute didnt care. I felt good about myself. I felt healthy and it woundedness into wisdom. And this work we can do in didnt matter that my favorite pants no longer buttoned. many ways; through therapy, 12-step programs, dreams, Justin felt the same way about himself. Attractiveness meditation and grace. The path for each of us is different. truly isnt physical it reflects the fascination you feel But when we are ready to heal, the right path will open. for life and comes from within. For our family, the Hoffman Quadrinity Process was an important opening at the right time in our lives. Woundedness to Wisdom My children are grown up now and I am well pleased. Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., is co-founder of the Harvard My own wounded emotional child is also grown up. I Mind-Body Clinic, and author of the best-selling books have no patience with the idea that we must coddle our such as Guilt is the Teacher, Love is the Lesson; Minding wounded inner child eternally, encouraging its whining the Body, Mending the Mind; and A Womans Book of and enabling our feelings of victimization to persist. It Life. Her newest book, Fried: Why You Burn Out and is never too late to grow up. And there is always time to How to Revive, is available from Hay House USA. be a better parent. During the last exercise of the Quadrinity Process, Reprinted with permission from Changes, April 1994. called integration, I experienced how love and healing Photo by Michael Jang.
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